The Hall of the Mountain King
by Rain Samuti
Summary: Yup. It's fanfic for a game that's nearly as old as I am. Manic Miner didn't have a plot, so I feel, as one of the people who played it obsessively, as though I owe it one.


DISCLAIMER - I don't own any rights to Manic Miner, nor any of the characters contained therein. They all belong to Matthew Smith.

If you run a Google search on the term Manic Miner, you'll be able to find a Javascript version you can play in your browser. That way you'll know what the hell I'm talking about.

"Now, did I ever tell you how I came across this?" Will opened the box. Lying inside, carefully wrapped in a blue teatowel, was a chunky brass key, the size of Brian's forearm.

Brian stared. It wasn't decorated, or really at all remarkable in any way except for its size - but he saw his eyes widen in its reflection.

"No. Damn, that must be a bloody big lock. I mean, Jesus."

Will smiled. "Aye, that's what I thought of, when all the fuss had died down and I could really _look_ at it. It was the one thing I brought back and _kept_, you know."

Brian's eyes flicked up to meet Will's. "You mean, from..."

Will nodded. He flicked a thumb towards the ground, and winked. "Down There."

Brian swallowed. Will _never_ talked about those days. Well, _hardly_ ever.

"Here," said Will - "feel the weight of that." He lifted the key out of the box and handed it to Brian. It was heavy, and cold, and Brian's fingers could just barely meet around the shaft.

"If you're to marry my daughter, Brian, you need to know the old stories. And you need to believe them too, lad. Believe them like you believe the key you hold in your hand now."

Brian looked back up at Will. Will's eyes glittered - light blue eyes, wrinkles around the edges from smiling so much twenty, thirty, forty years ago.

That key really was _damn_ solid.

"Tell me," said Brian.

Will sat back in his chair. "Pass me another beer, lad. There's some backstory involved... Thanks. Right, then."

Will cracked open the can and took a swig. He set the can on the table.

"You've played the old game. Everybody has, above a certain age. Matt made it with the best we could get at the time. It took us _years._" He grinned. "It wouldn't have taken as long, had I not been so damn stubborn about it being _exactly_ as it really was... But Matt knew better - the Spectrum had its limitations. You couldn't just do whatever you liked in a game like you can today. And so, to make it a game that you could actually play and enjoy, Matt and I had to come to a lot of compromises.

"So, as you can imagine, once we'd gotten a few things changed for technical or gameplay reasons, since we'd already changed _this _and _this,_ we decided it wouldn't do any harm to... well, embellish it a bit. Change a few things. So, really, I suppose it's time to tell the tale again."

Brian blinked. "I had always wondered. I mean, just how much was really _real_."

"Well, lad, I sure as hell didn't _jump_ over this fellow. He was two feet taller than me!"

"Tell me everything. I'll believe you, I swear."

Will stared. "You shouldn't swear to things like that. But I'm gonna tell you anyway.

"So there I was, about to take a leap onto a rusted old conveyor belt that just stretched off into the darkness. There was treasure down there in the dark, no doubt about it. There's always treasure of one fashion or another, wherever you go, even if it's not something you can take with you."

"You mean you were down there just out of curiosity?"

"At first, aye. I'd gotten quite a shock from the crumbling floors, but it was the _good_ kind of shock, y'know? Like you do when you're young. It feels _good_ to be scared - of course when you're my age, you grow to understand and fear exactly what death is. But back then, it was damn exhilerating.

"So I jumped. I jumped straight onto this damn thing, and it swayed and I thought it was gonna fall in... wait, I haven't told you why this was so frightening, yet."

"Go on."

"Well, you know how in the game you've just got that little jump and then you're on the conveyor? In the first level?"

"Yeah?"  
"Well, it wasn't like that. I was on a ledge down there in the dark, and there was about a four-foot gap between me and the edge of this belt. And there was nothing to fall into if I missed. I mean, I'd shone my torch down there, but the light wouldn't reach all the way down. I'd tossed a threppence down there, and I'd heard it spin and spin and spin off into the pit, probably all the way down to Hell. And I was about to jump this chasm. It was only four feet, granted, but if anything should go wrong, or if the conveyor wouldn't take my weight... It was only supported to the cave ceiling by a few bits of scaffold, you know. It must have stuck out from the hole in the wall by about twenty feet... Aw, hell, Brian, my point was, it didn't look _safe._ And I knew that if I misjudged this, I would fall to either a bloody death or a watery death, one way or the other. And I still jumped, just for the hell of it."

"For the treasure."

"Aye, for the treasure. When I landed I stuck my arms out and wobbled and swayed about like anything. Then I got my balance, and the adrenaline kicked in. I was shaky as hell, and it felt icy, you know, how it does."

Will took another swig of beer. "Anyway. So I started to walk along the conveyor belt. And, y'know, it was my own little adventure. It was just dangerous enough to be so much damn fun I wanted to just explore these old mines all day long, and it was all _mine._ Y'know, it didn't _belong_ to me, but I was the only person there, and I thought I was the only person who had been there in a long time, so it felt like my own little world.

"That was about the time that the conveyor belt lurched forward. I fell flat on my arse. Now, _this_ wasn't fun - this was a piss-take. This was a conveyor belt that hadn't been oiled in fifty years suddenly jumping into life, and me being pulled along, picking myself up as it took me into the cave wall, and solid rock surrounded me. In fact, this wasn't just not fun any more, this was damn _frightening._

"Now, the poisonous bushes I didn't come into contact with until later on, but Matt thought they would go well in level one, so he kept them in there. But just to let you know, they don't actually kill you, just make the world spin, and there weren't any on that conveyor belt. And they looked a damn sight prettier in the real cave - of course, they weren't green like Matt made them. He only made them green so they looked like bushes. No photosynthesis in a cave, so no chlorophyll in the leaves. They were a sort of... eggshell blue. Magical.

"But I digress. I kept my torch flicking around to see what was around me. Now, there was nothing keeping me down there. I was scared out of my wits, but I knew something _big_ was about to happen. I hurried on down the belt, wanting to get to it before I missed it.

"I heard this noise - heavy metal clanging and mechanical ticking and electrical hum, getting louder and louder. The acoustics in there were funny - I was looking around behind me, to my sides, everywhere. Then I saw the brass, flashing back at me. I saw that key, that you hold in your hands right now, turning."

Brian felt a chill. He knew what was coming - anyone would. He'd played the game, he'd forgotten it, he'd never thought for a moment that any of it could have been real. Then he'd met Rose, who had introduced him to her father, and he was a living legend, a man whose adventures had been lived out by thousands of people - none of them ever imagining that the game was real.

"You know the thing to which I refer. It turned around at that point, and I froze, and I stared.

"Now, considering the Spectrum only had eight available colours and all the sprites in the game had to be the same size and colour, you couldn't really do justice to what was happening, here. I could reach my arm up as high as I could, and I'd probably just be able to reach the top of its head. Its eyes were shining yellow lamps, and they had me pinned like a deer in headlights. But the _mouth..._ Jesus, it was this big black rubber thing - I know it was all yellow in the game, that was supposed to be the brass, but brass can't bend, y'see - and it never stopped moving in that black rubber surround. Its mouth was most of its belly. It could just lean forward and bite me out, from my hips to my neck, in one big chomp. And it had teeth to do just that.

"I was paralysed. I couldn't move, I couldn't think, I damn near shit myself. I'd never come across something that wanted to kill me. Hell, I'd never come across something that _simple_ in my life. Hey, kid, here's something that looks like it really wants to eat you - so you do the logical thing, the _simple_ thing, and you leg it. Except I couldn't. It was walking towards me, _clang, clang, clang,_ with its key turning in its back, _tickticktickticktick,_ big ancient mouth biting the air, getting ready to bite me clean in half, and I was on a conveyor belt pulling me closer to this bloody thing.

"When I could smell the rubber in its mouth, I snapped back into some frame of mind in which I was able to move. I turned tail and _ran._ I outran it by a long way, and got to the end of the conveyor belt.

"Now, there was some magic in those caverns. I believe that, I always have done. So maybe lady luck just happened to give me the insight on how to defeat this monster, or maybe the caverns wanted me to win. Just on instinct, as I reached the mouth of the cave wall, I pulled myself up on the scaffold and hung there, above the opening.

"I waited about ten seconds for the monster to pass underneath me, shaking the conveyor as it went. I dropped down, and yanked the key from its back."

Will leaned back.

Brian hesitated. "That was quick thinking," he offered.

"Aye." Will grinned. "It was more than that. It was something _else_ thinking for me. Here, come with me." He got up from his chair. "Don't let the ladies see where we're going, they'll only wonder. Can they see us?"

Brian looked back towards the house. "Nope. Where are we going?"

"You'll see, lad." Will began walking towards the shed, at the bottom of the very long garden. "You'll see soon enough. And bring that key with you."

Brian grabbed the key and followed. "What happened after you took this?"

"Oh, that old monster just kept right on going. Y'know… I can't quite bring myself to call it a _machine._ Or an animal. "Monster" really is the only word that will do the trick."

"Then how did you escape?"

"I didn't have to. Brian, what you have to understand about this thing is that it was _made._ And it was made using very primitive technology. Whatever race of people created it were very resourceful, very determined, and very good at using very little. Like the astronauts. You know how much processing power it took to send a man to the moon?"

"How much?"

"If you networked half a dozen Commodore 64's together, that'd be about as much as they used. Our two races aren't that dissimilar in the ideas we come up with. They just don't have our patience... or our laziness, one of the two."

Brian waited patiently for Will to get to the point, as he rested his hand on the toolshed's bolt.

"I've seen the inside of that thing, Brian, and let me tell you, it's amazing." He smiled. "It has very little intelligence, and just enough room in its head to remember its name and the master-slave relationship, but what's really impressive is that it manages to do all that without an ounce of silicon. It does it with relays, and those ticker-tape things with the holes punched in them, and these columns of rotating discs with electrical contacts on them, and one mother of a battery."

Brian glanced towards the toolshed. He looked back at Will.

"No way."

Will grinned.

"No _way,"_ repeated Brian. "You didn't bring it back with you."

"It _breathes,_ Brian. All of its major moving parts are pneumatically powered. It sucks the air in and then jets it out just like we do, and oxygenates its battery in the same breath."

"No."

"It _eats_ things. It chews them up and swallows them and then they rot inside it. It can generate an electrical charge from the chemical reactions in the decomposition."

"I don't believe you."

"You swore you would."

"I believe in the mines, but I don't believe you would have -"

Will opened the door. Brian stared.

They stared together for a long time.

"I've never figured out every last detail of how it works. It has just enough room in its head to recognise who holds the key. That, and its own name. The rest – the motor skills, the impulses that tell it to eat and to kill, how it walks and breathes – all of that is hardwired. It's all in the cogs and gears and relays. It'll remember them all. The first time you wind it up."

Will grinned and walked away, leaving Brian staring at the machine with his mouth open, holding the key. After a few steps, Will began to whistle "In the Hall of the Mountain King," heading back to the house for another beer.

THE HALL OF THE MOUNTAIN KING

Thank you for reading.


End file.
